As far back in time as modern man has been able to deduce his own history, well before the creation of writing, his ancestors have played games. Similarly, it is believed that man has bet on the outcome of games before the beginning of recorded history. Whether or not betting is involved, without a doubt game-playing is one of man's favorite ways to spend his time.
Many games involve physical skills, such as running, jumping, and engaging in activities that require great dexterity and physical ability. In addition to much practice, in order to become highly accomplished at such games, the player must have certain innate physical abilities. Contrarily, many other games involve essentially no physical skills, but only mental skills. Some might argue that some of these games require innate mental abilities in addition to much practice and learning, in order to be highly proficient. However, because there are no physical hurdles to be overcome, mental games are by far the most popular around the world. Such games include bridge, chess, backgammon, checkers, dominoes, go, scrabble, cribbage, gin rummy, and thousands of others, including, of course, poker.
Poker has existed in the United States in its modern form since the late 1800s, though many variations have been introduced since then. Poker-like games are believed to have existed as least as far back as the 15th century. Although the popularity of poker has grown almost continually since its American introduction in the 1800s, there was a tremendous increase in popularity in the early part of the 21st century. At this time, the first popular television shows featuring poker were created, and the availability of poker played online for real money brought both the awareness of the game, and the ability to easily play the game, to every adult. A player no longer had to be near a brick-and-mortar casino or poker room, or to arrange a gathering of players at a private location, in order to participate in a real money poker game. Online poker games also offered the chance to play for play money. This allowed a novice player to practice without monetary risk, and then move up slowly into the smallest real money games and eventually high-stakes real money games, after learning the rules and strategy.
Poker has been growing in popularity for over a century. In recent years, this popularity has exploded. It is estimated that hundreds of millions of people around the world play poker now. And a large fraction of those people also play poker online in virtual poker games, for play money or for actual cash. In addition to poker, many other competitive games of skill are commonly played around the world. Some of these games involve cards, while others involve dice or other implements. Examples of such games include backgammon, bridge, rummy, go, Othello, video games of all sorts, and the like.
Because all of these games are competitive, players are always looking for ways to improve their playing skills and more importantly their results. Players study books written by experts on the game, engage in discussion and debate in online forums dedicated to the game, watch training videos, and spend sometimes thousands of hours in practice and training The desire to improve one's abilities is even greater if the game in question is regularly played for real money, as is the case with poker.
High-stakes poker games have existed for decades, even centuries. These games are not played by very many players, because very few players have both enough money, and the willingness to risk that money, at such high stakes. However, even players who will never play for such large amounts of money enjoy tremendously the opportunity to observe these high-stakes games. There are several television shows dedicated to high stakes cash poker games, where players win or lose hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. There are many more television shows dedicated to poker tournaments, where players have paid anywhere from a three to six figures to enter the competition, and stand to win anywhere from four to eight figures in prize money. These television shows are watched by millions of viewers around the world. In the virtual world, there are many high stakes cash games and tournaments played all the time. And millions of people love to go to their favorite online poker room and watch these virtual games of poker. And though the games are virtual, being played online, the money being won and lost in some of these games is very real, and also can reach into the millions of dollars.
One reason viewers like to watch high stakes poker games is simply that they enjoy watching other people compete for sums of money that are beyond them. Another reason is that the viewers are themselves players, but do not have the money nor the skill to compete successfully in these high stakes games, but wish to watch the high stakes players so as to learn more about correct poker strategy, and thereby improve their own playing ability. In many cases, these players wish that they could play as skillfully as the players they enjoy watching in the high stakes games.
The following documents were published prior to Apr. 7, 2011: U.S. Pat. No. 7,736,221 entitled “Poker online playing system”, PCT Publication WO/2007/010308 entitled “Betting on games using a betting exchange system”, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2006/0121973 entitled “Method, system and program product for monitoring an online card game to provide a summary view and/or real-time notifications”, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2005/0233791 entitled “System and method for conducting a game”, Australian Patent Application No. AU 2007202981 entitled “System for facilitating participation in the outcome of competitive events”, and http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/synthetic-sngs-bet-games-progress-966786/. All of these documents are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.